Pimpri: Pimpri township in Maharashtra has
achieved a distinction of sorts -- it has become the country's
first urban centre where GPS is being used to monitor garbage
collection.
Known as GPS-based Management for Waste Carrier
Solution, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipality Corporation (PCMC) has
introduced the system to ensure cleanliness and transparency
in garbage disposal.
It has deployed a fleet of trucks equipped with GPS
(global positioning system) devices for lifting garbage from
dustbins across the town. The vehicles are assigned routes and
particular waste bins.
"By implementing this system as part of e-governance
under the JNNURM reform agenda, we are able to monitor the
actual movement of the waste collecting vehicles on real time
basis," said PCMC Commissioner Asheesh Sharma.
"Now we can identify those dustbins which are not
cleaned or for that matter when the bin was last served
besides how many trips a particular vehicle make in a day," he
said.
Earlier the corporation was flooded with complaints of
waste not cleared for days.
"There was no system to validate the productivity of
the fleet and payments were done purely on the basis of manual
records of number of trips made by each vehicle."
PCMC has taken up the project in association with TATA
Autocomp and TATA Teleservices for introducing the technical
solution to the waste management in the area.
"The location of each dustbin in the city is geo coded
and the status of dustbins and vehicles monitored on the
Internet," said JNNURM coordinator Nilkanth Poman.
While 165 vehicles are being fitted with GPS tracker
system, geo coding has been done on 1,279 dustbins and 75
routes across the city.
When a waste carrier vehicle stops near a bin within a
specified distance for a scheduled period, the bin with a
particular colour will be shown as "served" on the system
which means waste is being lifted from it. A green light in
the bin means it was served in the last 24 hours while a red
bin indicates it was not attended to in the last 24 hours.
Initially, the GPS system was operational in a limited
area in Pimpri for six months as a pilot project.
"After analysing the results of the pilot project, we
made certain modification in the system and now the entire
municipal area is covered," Poman said.
PCMC Commissioner Sharma admitted that there was initial
resistance from the staff concerned for deployment of such
technology which brings a lot of transparency and deficiency
in operations.
"But we overcame that and now it is operating smoothly,
he said.
Bureau Report